George Orwell’s A Collection of Essays continues to inspire. Included in this collection is “Such, Such Were the Joys,” describing Orwell’s traumatic early school years in an English boarding school; “Shooting an Elephant,” narrating an experience he had in Burma which shed light on the nature of colonialism; “Marrakech,” illustrating colonialism’s marginalization of people of color; “Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War,” summarizing Orwell’s view on the war; “Politics and the English Language,” decrying slovenly, abstract language, and showing its relationship with slovenly thinking; and “Why I Write,” articulating Orwell’s motivation for writing. Many of his essays continue to resonate.

Orwell’s prose is clear, precise, and to the point. He refrains from using pretentious jargon, doesn’t dance around with his words, or camouflage his meaning. He relishes in the details of daily life and displays an uncanny ability to locate significance in an otherwise trivial event. His themes are political with a focus on systemic, institutionalized oppression and racism. Orwell’s discussion of how language can be used as a tool to foster totalitarianism through its distortion of reality, intentional obfuscation of meaning, and proliferation of lies acts as a cautionary warning. His words are particularly relevant today as we struggle with fake news and incendiary language.

Orwell was well ahead of his time in his thinking and in warning of the dangers of sloppy language and sloppy thinking; the deleterious impact of institutionalized racism; and the need for a prose that is succinct, specific, and conveys meaning. He argues we are bombarded with messages in our everyday lives seeping into our minds and influencing our thinking. His essays are prescient; his prose intimate, honest, and lucid. His ideas, thoughts, and style are as relevant today as they were when they first appeared decades ago.

Orwell was a man on a mission to raise awareness of the injustices he encountered. His advocacy for a truly democratic and socially equitable society speaks to us across the decades.

Highly recommended.

My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

Orwell the novelist did not particularly impress me, but when I was reading his essays I had the impression that my IQ soars towards the realm of 200s, and plunges as soon as I close the book. He writes clearly and elegantly, beautifully constructing the argumentation and paragraph structure.

A note: whoever is responsible for the font size in this edition (ISBN 9780141395463, Modern Classics Essays) is an utter idiot. This is definitely a compressed version of a book designer for a larger format - the librarian who ordered it was inconsolable.

A list of essays I particularly enjoyed and/or could use at work (these are in bold):

MARRAKECH (1939)n  

...people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are. Still, a white skin is always fairly conspicuous. In northern Europe, when you see a labourer ploughing a field, you probably give him a second glance. In a hot country, anywhere south of Gibraltar or east of Suez, the chance is that you don't even see him. I have noticed this again and again. In a tropical landscape one's eye takes in everything except the human beings.. It takes in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear, the palm-tree and the distant mountain, but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less interesting to look at.

It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas. But where the human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed.

n

BOYS’ WEEKLIES(1940) for stereotyping (classes, nationalities) ans propaganda (why is there no left-wing weekly for boys?)n  

It is that the characters are so carefully graded as to give almost every type of reader a character he can identify himself with. Most boys' papers aim at doing this, hence the boy-assistant (Sexton Blake's Tinker, Nelson Lee's Nipper, etc.) who usually accompanies the explorer, detective or what-not on his adventures. But in these cases there is only one boy, and usually it is much the same type of boy. In the Gem and Magnet there is a model for very nearly everybody. (...)

If a Chinese character appears, he is still the sinister pigtailed opium-smuggler of Sax Rohmer; no indication that things have been happening in China since 1912 — no indication that a war is going on there, for instance. If a Spaniard appears, he is still a ‘dago’ or ‘greaser’ who rolls cigarettes and stabs people in the back; no indication that things have been happening in Spain.

n

INSIDE THE WHALE (1940)"If the keynote of the writers of the twenties is ‘tragic sense of life’, the keynote of the new writers is ‘serious purpose’."

THE LION AND THE UNICORN: SOCIALISM AND THE ENGLISH GENIUS (1941)
"The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Goering's bombing planes."

THE ART OF DONALD MCGILL (1941)n  
n  

One of the few authentic class-differences, as opposed to class-distinctions, still existing in England is that the working classes age very much earlier. They do not live less long, provided that they survive their childhood, nor do they lose their physical activity earlier, but they do lose very early their youthful appearance. This fact is observable everywhere, but can be most easily verified by watching one of the higher age groups registering for military service; the middle- and upper-class members look, on average, ten years younger than the others. It is usual to attribute this to the harder lives that the working classes have to live, but it is doubtful whether any such difference now exists as would account for it. More probably the truth is that the working classes reach middle age earlier because they accept it earlier. For to look young after, say, thirty is largely a matter of wanting to do so. This generalization is less true of the better-paid workers, especially those who live in council houses and labour-saving flats, but it is true enough even of them to point to a difference of outlook. And in this, as usual, they are more traditional, more in accord with the Christian past than the well-to-do women who try to stay young at forty by means of physical-jerks, cosmetics and avoidance of child-bearing. The impulse to cling to youth at all costs, to attempt to preserve your sexual attraction, to see even in middle age a future for yourself and not merely for your children, is a thing of recent growth and has only precariously established itself. It will probably disappear again when our standard of living drops and our birth-rate rises.

n

RUDYARD KIPLING (1942)
"It is notable that Kipling does not seem to realize, any more than the average soldier or colonial administrator, that an empire is primarily a money-making concern. Imperialism as he sees it is a sort of forcible evangelizing."

LOOKING BACK ON THE SPANISH WAR (1942)
Seems to be a germ of 1984n  

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ — well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five — well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs — and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
(...)
But is it perhaps childish or morbid to terrify oneself with visions of a totalitarian future? Before writing off the totalitarian world as a nightmare that can't come true, just remember that in 1925 the world of today would have seemed a nightmare that couldn't come true. Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday's weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can't violate it in ways that impair military efficiency. The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.

n

BENEFIT OF CLERGY: SOME NOTES ON SALVADOR DALI (1944)
Oh, this is GOOD.

Just pronounce the magic word ‘Art’, and everything is O.K.: kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L'Age d'Or is O.K. It is also O.K. that Dali should batten on France for years and then scuttle off like rat as soon as France is in danger. So long as you can paint well enough to pass the test, all shall be forgiven you.

RAFFLESS AND MISS BLANDISH (1944)n  

Since cricket takes up a lot of time and is rather an expensive game to play, it is predominantly an upper-class game, but for the whole nation it is bound up with such concepts as ‘good form’, ‘playing the game’, etc., and it has declined in popularity just as the tradition of ‘don't hit a man when he's down’ has declined.
...
Early in the war the New Yorker had a picture of a little man approaching a news-stall littered with paper with such headlines as ‘Great Tank Battles in Northern France’, ‘Big Naval Battle in the North Sea’, ‘Huge Air Battles over the Channel’, etc., etc. The little man is saying ‘Action Stories, please’. That little man stood for all the drugged millions to whom the world of the gangster and the prize-ring is more ‘real’, more ‘tough’, than such things as wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famines and pestilences. From the point of view of a reader of Action Stories, a description of the London blitz, or of the struggles of the European underground parties, would be ‘sissy stuff’. On the other hand, some puny gun-battle in Chicago, resulting in perhaps half a dozen deaths, would seem genuinely ‘tough’. This habit of mind is now extremely widespread.
...
He is a popular writer — there are many such in America, but they are still rarities in England — who has caught up with what is now fashionable to call ‘realism’, meaning the doctrine that might is right. The growth of ‘realism’ has been the great feature of the intellectual history of our own age. Why this should be so is a complicated question. The interconnexion between sadism, masochism, success-worship, power-worship, nationalism, and totalitarianism is a huge subject whose edges have barely been scratched, and even to mention it is considered somewhat indelicate.

n

NOTES ON NATIONALISM (1945)

By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

GOOD BAD BOOKS (1945)

The existence of good bad literature — the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously — is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.

.

THE SPORTING SPIRIT (1945)

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
...
In a rustic community a boy or young man works off a good deal of his surplus energy by walking, swimming, snowballing, climbing trees, riding horses, and by various sports involving cruelty to animals, such as fishing, cock-fighting and ferreting for rats. In a big town one must indulge in group activities if one wants an outlet for one's physical strength or for one's sadistic impulses.

THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE (1946)n  
n  

There is no such thing as a genuinely non-political literature, and least of all in an age like our own, when fears, hatreds, and loyalties of a directly political kind are near to the surface of everyone's consciousness.
...
During a period of three hundred years, how many people have been at once good novelists and good Catholics?
...
Prose literature as we know it is the product of rationalism, of the Protestant centuries, of the autonomous individual. And the destruction of intellectual liberty cripples the journalist, the sociological writer, the historian, the novelist, the critic, and the poet, in that order.

n

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE COMMON TOAD (1946)
A GOOD WORD FOR THE VICAR OF BRAY (1946)

But to come back to trees. The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK REVIEWER (1946)

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.
...
The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews — 1,000 words is a bare minimum — to the few that seem to matter. Short notes of a line or two on forthcoming books can be useful, but the usual middle-length review of about 600 words is bound to be worthless even if the reviewer genuinely wants to write it.

HOW THE POOR DIE (1946)
Brings Foucault to mind. Orwell described his stay in a really bad hospital in Paris; people as objects, parallel between the hospital and the prison.n  
n  

One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death, but I think now, as I thought then, that it's better to die violently and not too old. People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? ‘Natural’ death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful. Even at that, it makes a difference if you can achieve it in your own home and not in a public institution.
...
A thing we perhaps underrate in England is the advantage we enjoy in having large numbers of well-trained and rigidly-disciplined nurses. No doubt English nurses are dumb enough, they may tell fortunes with tea-leaves, wear Union Jack badges and keep photographs of the Queen on their mantelpieces, but at least they don't let you lie unwashed and constipated on an unmade bed, out of sheer laziness.
...
If you look at almost any literature before the later part of the nineteenth century, you find that a hospital is popularly regarded as much the same thing as a prison, and an old-fashioned, dungeon-like prison at that. A hospital is a place of filth, torture and death, a sort of antechamber to the tomb. No one who was not more or less destitute would have thought of going into such a place for treatment. And especially in the early part of the last century, when medical science had grown bolder than before without being any more successful, the whole business of doctoring was looked on with horror and dread by ordinary people.

n

LEAR, TOLSTOY AND THE FOOL (1947)
SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS (1947)

Broadly, you were bidden to be at once a Christian and a social success, which is impossible.

This work is a strange collection which brings together short stories that I appreciated, at the beginning of the book with "A hanging" and "How I Killed an Elephant", autobiographical pieces, literary reviews and political texts.
I had enjoyed 1984 and The Animal Farm very much, and I wanted to continue my reading of George Orwell, but this book is not the right one, there are some exciting things, but the whole is an uneven patchwork and with parts that do not match. On the other hand, I found it very interesting to see Orwell's very anarchist and leftist views.

A few years ago I read a study about Bette Davis by someone or other. I cannot recall the name of the author or of the book but I remember very clearly how at the end I admired the skill of Davis as an actor more than I had before reading but admired her as an actual person a good deal less. You probably never thought that Bette Davis, drama queen and 'movie siren' would sit comfortably alongside George Orwell in a review and perhaps they don't, (though I have heard George did a mean Joan Crawford impression), but at the end of this series of essays I think I have a similar reaction to him and his craft.

The essays and articles span the last 20 years of his life and include the prose for which he is famous such as his account of taking part in the execution of a rebel in Burma and of the shooting of a rogue elephant down through his accounts of sleeping rough or his being hospitalized in a mediocre hospital in France and then on through his clarion calls for the ending of the inequality and oppression of the state, the hypocrisy and obfuscation of varying Governments' 'doublespeak' and then more lilting and amusing reflections on the power of a nice cup of tea, the draw of the bookshop and the unlikely herald of spring, the toad.

The articles and essays are fascinating and are emminently quotable but I will restrain myself, to a large extent, but the most interesting aspect I found was the way you saw the plots and theories that were to dominate Orwell's fiction and more extended factual work being brought to birth as it were in these shorter reflections. His loathing of hypocrisy, his joining of battle against the forces of totalitarianism wherever they are found, his intense loathing for the lack of principled thought in so much poltical life, his hatred of the mealy mouthed use of words in which meanings and understandings are blurred and warped; all of them weere seen growing and developing.

His flashes of humour and sarcastic wit can be found in the most unexpected of places and his honing in on one little detail to make his point is a regular occurrence. Speaking at one point of the patriotism present in most people in times of conflict he defends this and points it out as natural but then says (of England)

'It is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control...'

that sentence captures the genius, as I see it, of Orwell. A man fighting, always fighting for justice but with a great use of prose to make his point.

At another point, whilst criticizing the hypocrisy of the leftist politicians between the wars,

'It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true, that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ' God save the King' than of stealing from a poor box'

or again of truth and history

'I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonnment of the idea that history could be truthfully written......the implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, 'it never happened' - well, it never happened. '

He deals with quite apposite questions for our own day, certainly here in Britain; political correctness, the freedom of the press cf The Leverson Enquiry as of today still investigating phone hacking and persecution of innocent private lives by the press, the misuse of league tables and the like in Schools and cramming just for short term exam success and not for a lifetime of educated and balanced people. This is all fascinating and intriguing but the negative aspect of Orwell lurks in the background. That he had a hard and difficult life is not to be denied, that there was much for him to become embittered about cannot be ignored and recognizing the differences of 1930 and 40's mores or outlooks then his pejorative descriptions of 'Jews ', his disgust of homosexuality and his rather dismissive outlook towards women might be understandable even if not welcomed but it is his underlying lack of respect for the 'working class' that is so off-putting.

His feelings that they should have a better standard of living, and there is no doubting his sincerity concerning the need for a radical overhaul and redistribution of wealth and opportunity, does not seem to extend to his actually liking them. He speaks incredibly high-handedly of their grossness and ugliness and stupidity, of course he recognizes the individual strengths of individual examples but, as a group, he is wholly unimpressed. Maybe this is inevitable as the two sided coin of the chasm between classes in the first half of the 20th Century alongisde Orwell's own miserable persona but it makes for uncomfortable reading.

On a lighter side to finish. Orwell was intelligent, clear thinking, insightful and perceptive but he still thought that by the 1970's there would only be about 13 milion people in the UK...yeah right Georgie

Orwell writes so well you want to give him a standing ovation. This collection contains several classic essays -- "Shooting an Elephant", "Politics and the English Language", "Such, Such were the Joys" (memories of his schooldays) -- as well as amazing pieces on Dickens, Kipling, and the state of literature in the 1930s ("Inside the Whale"). Whether writing about the English national character, analyzing the content and effect of popular comics for boys, or explaining his own compulsion to write, Orwell is always engaging and writes in clear, crisp prose that most essayists can only aspire to.

These extraordinary essays will sweep away any niggling resentment of Orwell you might feel because you were forced to read "Animal Farm" and/or "1984" in high school, and inspire you to seek out more of his work.

Sel Yayınları, George Orwell’ın denemelerini birçok kitapta toplayıp basmış. Edebiyat Üzerine de yazarın zamanında gazetelerde ve dergilerde yayınlanan yazılarından oluşuyor.

Deneme benim en sevdiğim türlerden biridir. George Orwell ise en sevdiğim yazarlardan biri ama maalesef yazarın ülkemizde çıkan deneme türündeki kitaplarını bir türlü çok sevemedim. Bence bunun nedeni kitaplarda toplanan denemelerin çok farklı konuları içermesi. Yazarın anılarından oluşsa ya da edebiyat alanındaki fikirlerini içeren yazıları olsa bayılarak okuyacağıma eminim ama siyasetle ilgili fikirleri de var kitaplarında. Siyasetle hiç alakası olmayan biri olarak bu yazılarda maalesef sıkılıyorum. Konuyla ilgili olanlar beğeniyle okuyabilirler belki.

Yine de kitapta hoşuma giden yazılar oldu tabii. Ancak yazarla tanışmak isteyenler mutlaka önce romanlarından başlamalı.

https://suleuzundere.blogspot.com/202...

If one has to write , he has to be free from boundaries .
As elif shafak say " everything dies in circles " . Cricles of boundaries, creed , cast and thought.

Essay " why i write" is worth reading for every writer . It streamlines the whole process of thinking.

Okay so, let's get one thing straight: My review is not of this particular book, but I've read a collection of Orwell's essays and didn't know how to mark them.
The essays I read are:

- Politics and The English Language: It was what intrigued me to read these bunch of essays in the first place. I got the idea that it was what gave birth to the idea of Newspeak (the language used in 1984), but upon reading it, it was very different.. More like a critique of changes in writing styles. Orwell was very "bitter? lol" in his criticism, though.

- Some Thoughts on the Common Toad: This was, I think, my favorite of the collection. It basically sends the message that: even though the world is crumbling around us, doesn't mean that we can't appreciate the little beautiful things surrounding us.

- Shooting An Elephant: This essay, was the most thought-provoking of them all. It made me think of colonization in a deeper way. It was very interesting to see the point of view of someone among the colonizers.

- You and the Atomic Bomb: I could see many ideas that ended in the book in 1984 forming in this essay, and like 1984 it was somewhat prophetical.

- Confessions of a Book Reviewer: I thought I'd relate more to this essay but it was in fact, more like a description of how a life of a professional book reviewer is (someone who does it as a job). So naturally- did not relate. But George Orwell did build a realistic, almost tangible setting and atmosphere.

- Poetry and the Microphone: Reminded me of what we now call Podcasts. Orwell would've been proud that this thing exists now. But the dilemma of the image of poetry, and its accessibility is still unfortunately, present.

- Books Vs. Cigarettes: THE BEST ARGUMENTS AGAINST BOOK-BUYING HATERS!

In conclusion, I can say with confidence, that I prefer Orwell's nonfiction, over his fiction.

You would think that essays about politics and culture written in the 1940s might feel dated. But Orwell brings a clear immediacy to his writing. A few of these essays are brilliant. All are relevant.

Includes "Shooting the Elephant" and "Politics and the English Language". Genius.

The joy of reading Orwell fangirl and roast stuff. 9/10

An Orwellian Feast

This truly is a feast of writing from a prescient man who claimed to be an atheist yet chose to live a Christ-like existence among the downtrodden, who battled through a life of illness, yet fought and suffered the scars of Fascism and could articulate frightening visions of the dangers of Totalitarianism, images that remain our guideposts to this day.

This collection of 39 essays written in the last 18 years of his life cover a diversity of subjects set in different milieu: from his colonial sojourn as a policeman in Burma to his peregrinations through workhouse shelters as a tramp, from visiting mines in the impoverished north of England to spending time in a public hospital in France where more people die than recover, from working in bookshops and observing reading tastes of the time to his wartime exploits in the Spanish Civil War and WWII, and his post-war work as a journalist, Orwell exercises his incisive powers of observation and judgment that takes no prisoners. He is at times in conflict with himself when he says that his best writing is political and yet later declares that a person’s literary activities and political activities should remain separate: “When a writer engages in politics he should do so as a citizen, as a human being, but not AS A WRITER. Just as much as anyone else, he should be prepared to deliver lectures in draughty halls, to chalk pavements, to canvass voters, to distribute leaflets, even to fight in civil wars if it seems necessary. But whatever else he does in the service of his party, he should never write for it. He should make it clear that his writing is a thing apart.”

He takes on the literary greats of his time, mainly in the role of a book reviewer (His essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer” is worthy of a separate review, for it has so many gems for readers on this forum, and eerily rings true with what is happening today). Some of his prize quotes to whet your appetite:
-t“He (Twain) even for a period of years deserted writing for business; and he squandered his time on buffooneries.”
-t“He (Yeats) is a great hater of democracy, of the modern world, science, machinery, the concept of progress — above all, of the idea of human equality.”
-t“The most immoral of Wodehouse’s characters is Jeeves, who acts as a foil to Bertie Wooster’s comparative high-mindedness and perhaps symbolizes the widespread English belief that intelligence and unscrupulousness are much the same thing.”
-t“Tolstoy was capable of abjuring physical violence, but he was not capable of tolerance or humility, and even if one knew nothing of his other writings, one could deduce his tendency towards spiritual bullying.”
-t“Shakespeare was not a systematic thinker, his most serious thoughts are uttered irrelevantly or indirectly.”

Orwell stands as a respected outsider in the literary establishment, without allegiance to anyone. His comment on the Spanish Civil War sums up his position: “Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops.” Indeed, no good local writing came out of that conflict, Hemingway notwithstanding.

Through this collection of essays, a portrait of Orwell emerges. A frightened schoolboy sent off to public boarding school at age eight; he was humiliated in front of his peers for bedwetting and soundly thrashed until the “bad habit” was cured. He followed his father at the age of 19 into the British overseas civil service and witnessed the underbelly of colonialism, resigning his cushy job after five years in Burma. Orwell chose thereafter to mix with the downtrodden even though he could have gone home at the end of the day to a warm bed in middle-class England. He joined the Spanish Civil War to fight Fascism and Communism which he saw as existential threats to Democratic Socialism. His prescience resulted in Animal Farm and 1984, books that ensured him literary immortality. Interestingly, those two books are the least mentioned in these essays which cover a broader swath of life, history, literature and politics, and present a more comprehensive picture of the author’s breath and depth.

Upon finishing this collection, I had a sudden thought. I would like to have spent time with this man, despite him dying a few years before I was born. Given our mutual colonial upbringing, and having had to spend life as outliers in the literary field, we would have had a lot to talk about, I’m sure. In particular, I would liked to have asked him, given the great literary gifts he was bestowed with, why did he choose the squalor?